


As The Sea

by minerrvas



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Death, Depression, F/M, Grief/Mourning, I want to sue myself over this amount of angst, Recovery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-07
Updated: 2017-04-16
Packaged: 2018-10-16 03:31:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10562814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minerrvas/pseuds/minerrvas
Summary: "This was the first day of her life without Jake Griffin and already she didn't know how to go on." - A take on the strong woman we all know and love crumbling in the face of grief and trying to deal with mental illness in the aftermath.





	1. Prologue

Depression was a dark, endless pit. When you reached rock bottom, you felt numb. The actual pain - it occurred during the fall. And the fall… it was long.

Abby felt like she was falling. The full experience; she was getting it. Her stomach churning, the wind being knocked out of her lungs, her throat too much in shock to actually produce a scream. It wasn’t an experience, even. It felt like the lack of one. Her life, right now, was just… a collective lack of things. Empty. Falling. At high speed, cold wind slapping her cheeks, her brown, colourless eyes focusing on the approaching ground…

Physically, she was lying very still. The bedroom was quiet - too quiet. The bed she was lying on was unmoving, no other body pressing down the other side of the mattress. Abby’s mouth was slightly open, as if her muscles had given out. Only empty air was escaping her lips. She was lying on her side, one arm slightly hanging off the bed’s edge. Her nose was reddish, her cheeks were damp. At times, she believed she’d shed all the tears her body possessed, only to feel new wetness run down her skin and drop onto the covers.

She didn’t brush her teeth or shower that day. She didn’t even eat that day, despite the gnawing hole in her abdomen. She only drank as a survival instinct, and she did so out of the faucet in their bathroom - _her_ bathroom now. Abby craned her back and head to catch some of the cold stream with her mouth. Unfortunate for her, there was a mirror above the sink, and when she looked at the glass, the ghost of herself stared back. Glassy eyes and raw, dark circles beneath them. Pale skin like white powder. The piped water didn’t manage to erase the taste of grief on her tongue.

When she saw herself, she saw the afterlife. Life not after death generally, but _his_ death. It was like her body was trying to imitate a spirit, or better yet - her soul trying to escape its physical shell so she could be with him. Hence the faded colours. The lost glow. Sobs began to choke her throat for the dozenth time that day and she had to put her delicate, yet sturdy hands - veins slithering through the aging flesh like snakes - on the counter space to steady herself.

This was the first day of her life after Jake Griffin and already she didn’t know how to go on.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Cece tries to make things better, Abby can't stop feeling guilty and defensive and Marcus Kane comes up in conversation.

It was a new day, and Abby had hoped for this one to be different. Lighter. Easier.

What illusion was she trying to create for herself?

Grief wasn’t a floor you could escape from by using a flight of stairs, climbing down step by step, day by day. It wasn’t 'steps'. It was a whole hurricane of things, at least that’s what it felt like. Abby didn’t know when she’d reach the next 'step', _if_ she ever would. Right now, a future without Jake was a canvas that didn’t allow colours, a painting meant to be black and white. She didn’t know how to reach for the palette with red, blue and yellow. Knowing it existed but not being able to use it, _feel_ it anymore, left her mouth drier than the thirst she felt when she didn’t have the energy to lift her body from this bed.

This fucking bed.

It contained many memories, so many that Abby was considering throwing it out and buying a new one so she wouldn’t have her dead husband’s smell in her nose anymore.

It was a new day, and Abby didn’t feel any more inspired to drag herself from her bedroom. _I’m being a bad mother,_ she kept thinking, over and over, torturing herself, _Clarke’s out there. I should be with her. I should comfort her._ What had her daughter been doing? Staying in her own room as well? Had Clarke actually eaten anything? Her chest clenched with both emotional and physical pain. _Bad mother. You’re a bad mother, Abby._ Yet she didn’t move a muscle. What was this invisible weight pressing her down? She _needed_ to get up. She _had_ to.

On the nightstand, she heard her phone vibrate. Abby sighed, a heaving breath entering and exiting her lungs. Perhaps she shouldn’t ignore the whole outside world while she was in such a state, shouldn’t isolate herself. She concentrated on working up energy to actually move her arm to take the phone and-

No movement. Nothing.

 _Don’t think about it, Abby. Move. You can’t think too much._ That thought came too late, in her opinion, the amount of thinking she’d done in the past 40-something hours seemed like it had rendered her unmoving forever.

In the next few minutes, her phone vibrated once again, but she simply closed her eyes, willing for it all to fade out.

* * *

Abby didn’t know how much time passed until there came a sound from downstairs. The doorbell ringing, a door opening, then closing. Her eyes widened, her first reactive thought centering around Clarke. She pushed herself up from the mattress, one side of her face feeling the air for the first time in hours, and stood up quickly, feeling dizzy for a moment. Her light-headedness didn’t stop her from walking straight toward the bedroom door and opening it. She stepped into the hallway and was about to walk to the staircase when Cece appeared at the upper end.

“Hey, Ab.” Their stares met each other from both ends, brown with brown.

“Hey.” Her response was a faint sound to her ears, but she didn’t get to work on fortifying her voice since Clarke suddenly joined the black-haired woman at the staircase.

“I hope it’s okay I let her in,” her little girl - little despite 16 years - said, and Abby had to stop the tears from flowing, working up a shaky half-smile and a nod as she met her daughter’s gaze. It was pained and haunted, probably just like her own. _I’m sorry,_ she wanted to say, _I’m so sorry._ After all, Clarke had been able to actually get up, from the looks of it. Her mother, supposed to be the responsible, caring one, had in turn just lain in bed, an unmoving body. Like a corpse. _I’m so, so sorry._

But before she could say anything, the girl had already disappeared downstairs.

“I come bearing gifts,” Cece spoke again, breaking the strained moment and lifting a shopping bag with what looked like… food. Tons and tons of… candy? “Let’s speak in your bedroom.”

“Cece, I-”

“Ab, first of all, you don’t have to worry about gaining weight, I mean, _look at you,_ have you even eaten something today?” she started speaking while already passing the threshold and laying the bags on the comforter, “Also, it’s proven chocolate makes you happy. Even Remus Lupin said that.”

“I’m not hungry,” Abby rebutted, although weakly and with little emotion in her voice. It sounded like a broken violin string. At this, her friend paused, turning around to face her, food seemingly forgotten, _thank god._

“Hey...” Cece uttered softly, stepping forward and - _oh hell, there it was_ \- enveloping her in a tight embrace. It was a déjà-vu, one that would probably occur many times in the time to come, but this one was only about Cece and her; Cece and her, one day ago, slightly different setting, the same words, identical hug. _Hey, it’s okay, I’m here. You’re not a burden, that’s fine. Just cry, it’s fine._

 _Am I not a burden?_ Abby quietly questioned as her tears poured into the woolen material covering her best friend’s shoulders, arms clinging tightly to the other woman’s back.

“Ab,” Cece began again, this time softer, “I know it’s been less than two days. But you need to eat, darling. We’re all worried. Clarke, too.”

At the mention of her daughter, Abby immediately disentangled herself, half-frantically wiping her cheeks and looking at the other woman with a certain amount of despair in her glassy eyes.

“I know. I’m sorry, I- How is Clarke? I know I should _know_ , but I- I couldn’t stand to get out of this bed, and- I’m a horrible mother, aren’t I?” Cece grasped at her forearms with something like a grimace, but the horrified look in her own eyes persisted. “I’m even making fucking excuses for it all. I… I don’t know what’s happening to me.” Her shoulders slumped, defeated and accompanied by a weary sigh, and she went over to her bed. She sat down on the edge, putting her head in her hands. Trying to get the weight out of her thoughts, feel a little less like Atlas. Her resolved, final statement was repetitive: “I’m sorry.”

God, it sounded so pathetic to her ears.

“The Abby I know-” Said person’s head snapped up, disbelief and a small flicker of rage nestled in her irises.

“ _Seriously,_ Cece?” She felt like her cry for help, however indirect, had been overlooked, misunderstood. She w as a proud woman, perhaps too proud for her own good, and asking for help would never feel entirely comfortable to her, but _damn it_ , she knew she needed it right now. But to be dismissed when you needed it the most… It opened up a hollow spot in her flesh. “The Abby you know is _asleep_. Hibernating. Unresponsive.” _Fucking dead,_ she wanted to scream. “She doesn’t want to live in a world without Jake.”

“Well, she has to!” Cece argued, trying to be soft, she assumed - but this topic wasn’t soft in itself, hence the attempt was crowned with failure. “Your kid is downstairs, without a father, but also without a mother, and exactly one of those can be prevented! I just…” Her friend had started walking around, pinching her nose. Thanks to decades of friendship, Abby knew it was meant to help her concentrate, not to keep her temper in check. Cece had always been the calmer, more moderate one, balancing out the bond between the two women. “I just wanted to encourage you to eat something, with Clarke. It would help you both, I’m sure.”

“...It probably would,” Abby conceded after a short moment of silence. She licked her lips. “But, Cece… I don’t know if I can do this alone. Balancing the job, Clarke and… myself.” It seemed like too much at this point. Even the request to eat, although a basic necessity, was something she’d need to claw her way through.

Abby Griffin was lost. Stuck in the deep abyss, not knowing how to get out, not knowing when and if she even could. Those days after Jake’s death - they felt like a waiting room. And the worst thing was not knowing where it led to.

“I’d offer to move in for a while, but I don’t know how much good it would do with my job,” Cece replied, finally coming to a halt and hesitatingly sitting down on the bed next to her best friend. The question mark floating above the Griffin household was a concern for both of them - she may not have been Abby’s blood, but she certainly was family. And with her newly acquired position as a top notch journalist at a newspaper, both knew Cece couldn’t afford to slack off or even spare the time she used to actually get some sleep. Those first days, with bringing over things and having lengthy discussions, were a luxury. What with all the attention she was receiving, Abby silently knew the state of grief was about the living, not the dead.

“Maybe you could ask Marcus.”

“What?” Abby found herself feeling a little dumbstruck, not having expected this turn in the conversation. “What’s he got to do with this?”

“I’m just _saying_ he was Jake’s best friend and he knows this family. He knows you and Clarke. You even were friends once.” Cece took her hand gently in her own. “It might do you good to…”

“Grieve together? Seriously, Cece?” Abby retorted, trying to pull away but not succeeding because of Cece’s strong, committed grip, faintly noticing how their talk was repeating itself. _This_ Abby seemed prone to argue with her best friend - something Marcus and she had done quite a lot before her husband’s death. She couldn’t grasp how they were supposed to get along any better now. “We _were_ friends, past tense, because he started acting like an asshole all of a sudden and I refused to tolerate that. I can’t imagine why he wouldn’t want to deal with this clusterfuck of a situation on his own, like he always does.”

“Ab, have you ever tried looking at this side of things? With his job, he’s under a lot of stress.”

“And how would you know that?” Abby’s eyes narrowed suspiciously, to which the woman next to her only rolled her eyes.

“Because even a stranger would know that by only looking at that man.” And she had to give Cece at least _that_.

“This doesn’t excuse him being a jerk though, or why I should let him live in this house,” Abby deadpanned, sticking to her statement with an unrelenting stare. Ignoring the look she was being given, Cece patted her friend’s hand amicably.

“I’m going to give him a call and tell him to check in with you,” and she continued despite _feeling_ Abby’s disbelief slithering through her own nervous system, “If he doesn’t, I’ll kick his ass. Promise.” Cece looked up at her best friend with firm concern. “I can’t check in all the time and he can’t stay holed up at his workplace or home forever.”

“Cece, yes, I know, but- Wait, he’s been _holed up_?”

“Despite your belief that his heart is a cold brick, he isn’t taking Jake well.” So it was ‘Jake’ now. The ‘Jake situation’. Hearing it described like that left a bitter taste in Abby’s mouth. Jake was so much more than his death and she didn’t want him remembered only for how he made people feel in the wake of his demise.

“Don’t call the situation… _Jake_ , Cece,” she breathed with a look into empty air, trying to swallow down the ball in her throat and curling her lips the way she always did when she was trying not to cry. She didn’t know what else to say regarding Marcus. He wasn’t her primary concern. “Let’s bring the food down. I need to eat something proper.” _And talk to Clarke,_ she thought with a new pile of remorse building up in her already constricted chest.

“Yeah, okay. I’m sorry,” Cece said, getting up and grabbing the bag from the bed. Once Abby had followed her lead, her friend stopped her from walking out of the room immediately, brushing a strand out of Abby’s face with one finger. “I’m so sorry, Ab. I’m just… trying to help. But I don’t really know how.”

Abby smiled gratefully, but it was a grimace laced with sadness. She took Cece’s hand and squeezed it. “None of us do.”

**Author's Note:**

> First off, I don't know how many chapters this will have, as I'm going with the flow. After all, mental illness is unpredictable as well. The chapters will be more short than long, I expect.
> 
> Basically, I'll delve into mental illness and specifically depression with this fanfiction, so if that topic triggers you, you should consider not reading further out of concern for your own mental health. It's an important topic to me, one that I think deserves more specific representation, and I need you to know that even the strongest of characters - like our beloved Abby - can be affected by it to the point of being unrecognizable during their struggle. I hope to be able to describe this accurately.
> 
> This work is called "As The Sea" since signs of recovery and healing come and go like waves.


End file.
